Vietnam travel: summer heats up travel market
01/06/07 (GMT+7)
Travel market, Vietnam travel agents are expecting their busiest season to date, as both outbound and inbound tours to the country remain fully booked.
Travel market observers said that tour prices in May skyrocketed by between 15 -80 percent but reservations of tours falling in late April and early May still doubled.
Vietnam luxury tours bound to Thailand, Singapore and China fell short of demand while hotels in major tourist destinations such as hotels in Ha Noi, hotels in Ha Long bay, hotels in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam and Nha Trang beach were at or near maximum occupancy rates.
Inflows of foreign tourists also continued to increase unabated, surpassing the 300,000 mark in May, representing an increase of 11.7 percent year on year.
Travel to Vietnam, the number of tourists travel in Vietnam hit a record high of 1.8 million over the past five months, increasing 12.4 percent over the corresponding period last year.
Travellers from the Republic of Korea topped the list at 223,200 for May, followed by the US with 181,700 arrivals and the Japanese with 179,200.
China was the only major tourist market from the top ten that saw a decrease in travellers, (16.2 percent) to Vietnam. Tight rules on cross-border travel certificates were blamed for the dip.
In other news, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism unveiled a plan to boost promotional campaigns abroad, highlighted by a recent submission to the Government to purchase advertisements on CNN.
“VNAT will spend 400,000 USD for three months of commercial advertising on CNN from the third quarter of 2007,” said the administration.
(Source: VNA)
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